Jeff Clavier's Software Only

The pledge of the podcast guest

OMG. I just listened to the first part of the podcast interview I did with Steve Gillmor and Mike Vizard over the week-end, and I have to disclose that if you care listening to the show (which I hope), you will be “entertained” by an ungodly number of “I think that”, “you know”, “basically”, “actually”, etc.

So I hereby pledge to do my best to avoid all these traits in my next podcast (VentureWeek #2). Believe, being an articulate podcast guest is harder than one thinks.

Regarding AttentionTech: this is a new series that Steve (who’s also doing the Gillmor Gang and Gillmor Daily) and Mike (a regular on the GG) have recently started distributing on the PodShow network after kicking it off on Sirius radio.
In this segment, we talked about Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and their impact on innovation, hiring talents, opportunities for new startups, etc.

Thanks to Steve and Mike for having on the show!

Here you go: http://mp3.attentiontech.podshow.com/AttentionTech23.mp3

Doug Kaye named person of year in Podcasting

I just heard that Doug Kaye, the producer of ITConversations and a pioneer in podcasting (since ITC started before the concept of podcast existed), has been named “Person of the year in Podcasting” by the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference Awards Committee. I started listening to podcasts – the first one being the Gillmor Gang, and bought my first MP3 player because of ITConversations, and I am glad to see that Doug was recognized by his peers for his contribution to the industry, building the first platform of distribution of technology-related programs.

Here is an excerpt of the announcement:

 Doug Kaye, the creator, host and executive producer of the popular technology podcast website IT Conversations, has received the Person of the Year Award. In 2005, in an effort to produce a greater amount of quality content for his listeners, Doug brought together a diverse team of volunteer podcasters to assist in recording, editing and producing audio sessions from technology conferences and events around the country. Team ITC’s podcasts are widely recognized for excellence in both audio quality and depth of content. Doug recently launched an even more ambitious effort to recruit and train volunteer podcasters from around the world to record and produce podcasts from any spoken word event including conferences, lectures and meetings. Through the non-profit “Conversations Network,” Doug’s goal is to record and archive content globally from as many events as possible. Respected among his peers, Doug has done a tremendous amount of work to make a wide variety of quality audio content available via podcasts. IT Conversations can be found at www.ITConversations.com.

Congratulations Doug, and thank you.

Yahoo launches a free podcast service

I was at the TechCrunch HQ tonight (see their post here) and learnt about the latest embargo expiring at 9PM PT tonight: Yahoo was about to release a free open podcast search and directory service, which will be available on podcasts.yahoo.com once the URL resolves (hint: if you were using UltraDNS, it would after a few minutes :-). The announcement has come by way of  an exclusive podcast interview of Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer, just released by PodTech.net’s John Furrier.

Since the directory is was not yet available, the only thing that can be done is read through the transcript of the interview. Besides offering functionality similar to iTunes 4.9 in an “open world” of multiple devices (discover, subscribe, deliver,…), Yahoo has reportedly taken the bold step to integrate podcasts throughout their properties:

[…] We think that podcasts should show up where it makes sense on Yahoo. They will be integrated across Yahoo. Right now we’ve done an interesting integration into the Yahoo Music engine where you can have the same kind of experience on the web directly on the Music engine, or you can download it to your device right there. You’ll start to find podcasts showing up throughout Yahoo if it makes sense like in Yahoo News. There (Yahoo News) you have blogs, so why wouldn’t you have podcasts? Take Yahoo movies, for example, there is already some great podcast out there like Ebert and Ropet and others by a bunch of guys just talking about movies. Why shouldn’t those be findable by Yahoo Movies? And, if you’re interested in a particular set of podcasts, we think there ought to be a personalized experience for you. So when you go to Yahoo Movies, and when we know that it’s you, we should show you the podcasts that you’re interested in.

It is interesting to note that Yahoo decided to release this just a few days after the Web 2.0 conference, maybe to make sure that there is no interference around the buzz that this will no doubt generate. Let me guess the headlines: “After Apple, Yahoo brings podcasting to the masses”, “Yahoo does not get podcasting”, “Bye bye Odeo”. How do I know ? Because this is what we have had every time a major actors launches a Web 2.0 functionality: praise, disgust, doom for at least one Web 2.0 company if not all of them.

I find quite cool that Yahoo reached out to the podcasting community by doing a podcast announcement. Bravo to John Furrier for pulling this one off.

Update: the site is now available, and the first thing that I see missing is an "Import OPML" functionality that would allow me to load up my subscriptions (from Odeo in my case).

Searching for one of my favorite shows "For Immediate Release" leads to a result page listing two feeds and a few shows. Clicking on the feed with the largest number of podcasts leads to this feed page. From there, it is possible to download or listen to individual shows, leave a rating or a review and tag the feed. Reviews are manually  moderated, so they don't appear immediately.

Subscribing to a feed gives the choice of using iTunes or the Yahoo Music Engine, which has been modified to deal with podcasts. This in turn will take care of the automatic downloading of shows and synchronization with a portable device.

The podcast directory also includes instructions to publish shows, but this does not seem to include any automation of the process - yet. This actually shows how challenging the process of publishing a podcast is without tools.

And since Yahoo is about to bring podcasts to the mass market, they also tell you about "what the heck is a podcast"? Feeds and shows can be searched through categories, tags or keywords.

Besides the lack of import functionality, this sounds pretty complete to me. The integration of podcasts throughout Yahoo is really what I find most notable.

The Yahoo Search Blog adds some interesting data points:

Our web-based player makes it simple and painless to listen right through your web browser. An accelerated playback feature (IE only) lets you "scan" a program at 2x speed to get the gist of it faster. You can use Yahoo! Podcasts with aggregators like iPodder (thanks to Andrew Grumet), with desktop media players like the Yahoo! Music Engine (the integration is beautiful!), iTunes, and with the latest version of iPodder, the Windows Media Player and even Winamp. Or, you can download the shows you want to any mp3 player, such as the iPod, iRiver, Dell DJ, Creative Zen, etc.

But wait, there's more ahead… We're already working on personalized podcast recommendations and friendly, easy-to-use tools so that anyone can create and publish a podcast or audio blog and share it with friends, family, coworkers, and the World Wide Web.

 

More:

• AP: Yahoo tunes into podcasting craze

Search SIG: we had a great inaugural session

I feel awful to have taken so much time to blog about the inaugural session of the Search SIG, but things have really been crazy. Besides a few logistics problems (such a the stack of pizza disappearing in an unbelievable time), our first meeting was a success. We had a great line-up of experts, interesting discussions, and a great audience – which we hope to see again every month.

A number of great posts have been written by some of our attendees: Mike Rowehl, Elisa Camahort (with a bonus), Ho John Lee, Tara Hunt and Dorrian Porter.

Oh, and a new meme has been invented during the meeting: the sarcasm tag. This was used during the session to explicitly indicate that someone was being sarcastic. You’ll hear it quite a few times on the forthcoming IT Conversations podcast.

As to the next sessions of the Search SIG: as previously announced, we will co-organize the October session with our friends of Mobile Monday. We will confirm the date and location shortly. I am also pleased to announce that the November session will be hosted by John Battelle.

     
    John Furrier and Doug             A great audience            Ev Williams, David Marks
   Kaye preparing the gear                                            Doug Kaye, Eric Rice, Jeff Karnes

Tag: searchsig

Search SIG: Finalizing the Audio event, calling for Mobile Search companies and the mailing list

The program of the inaugural session “Audio Search and Directories” of the Search SIG is now complete. Bradley Horowitz, who leads Media Search at Yahoo!, is the latest addition to the “Podside Chat”. Before Yahoo!, Bradley was the CTO of Virage, a pioneer in Audio search, so we’re glad to have him join Ev “Odeo” Williams, Eric “Audioblog.com” Rice, David “Loomia” Marks and the host of the evening, Doug “ITConversations” Kaye.

As a reminder, the session will take place on Wed Sept 14th at Yahoo’s HQ (701 First Avenue, Building C, Room 5 in Sunnyvale, CA), and will promptly start at 7PM (registration from 6:30PM on). Attendance is free for SDForum members, and charge is $15 for non-members – paid at the door.

Here is the final agenda:

6:30-7:00pm - Registration / Food & Drink
7:00–7:05pm - A few words about the Search SIG
7:05-8:00pm - Act I: Podside Chat on Audio Search, Directories, Podcasting – trends, opportunities, needs, risks, and anything Doug Kaye will want to cover
8:05-8:15pm - Intermission: Search Networking & Geeking Out
8:20-9:00pm - Act II: Product Demos from Audioblog.com, Loomia and Odeo – and Q&A with the audience
9:00-9:15pm - Open Mike Geek: Announcements (30 seconds of fame & fortune)
9:16pm - You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here

Note: at the end of our meeting, we will provide audience members with the opportunity to make very QUICK 30-second announcements of community geek benefit. however, if you exceed the time limit, you WILL get the hook ;)

And thanks to Jeremy Zawodny, Tim Mayer and Yahoo! for providing the key logistics we needed: space, food and beverages.

As I announced previously, we will be organizing the October session in conjuction with our friends of Mobile Monday on Mobile Search. If you have a mobile search service or application, and would be interested in presenting/demoing/launching at the event, feel free to contact us(searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com).

Finally, we have created a distribution list for Search SIG announcements – if you want to join, send an email to [email protected].

Have a great week-end, and see you on Wednesday!

PS: My co-chair Dave Mc Clure is definitely more artistic, check out that JPG. Cool or what ?

Tag: SearchSIG

Search SIG - Audio Search and Directories - Sept 14th, Yahoo! HQ

As I mentioned in the post announcing the creation of the Search SIG, our first event will be related to Audio Search and Directories. It will take place on Wed Sept 14th at Yahoo’s HQ (701 First Avenue, Building C, Room 5 in Sunnyvale, CA), and will promptly start at 7PM (registration from 6:30PM on).

We are delighted to have one of the main figures in the podcasting world, Doug Kaye, as the host of the evening. Doug is the Founder and Executive Producer of the famous ITConversations. Confirmed speakers include:

• Ev Williams, Founder/CEO, Odeo.com
• Eric Rice, Founder, Audioblog.com
• David Marks, Founder/CEO, Loomia.com

We are still waiting for the confirmation from Yahoo and Apple on the name of their speakers.

Here is the current agenda (still subject to changes):

6:30-7:00pm - Registration / Food & Drink
7:00-8:00pm - Act I: Podside Chat on Audio Search, Directories, & Podcasting Tools
8:00-8:15pm - Intermission: Search Networking & Geeking Out
8:15-9:00pm - Act II: Audio Search Panel Discussion & Product Demos
9:00-9:15pm - Open Mike Geek: Announcements (30 seconds of fame & fortune)
9:16pm - You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here

Note: at the end of our meeting, we will provide audience members with the opportunity to make very QUICK 30-second announcements of community geek benefit. however, if you exceed the time limit, you WILL get the hook ;)

The charge ? Free for SDForum members, $15 for non-members – paid at the door.

Any question ? Feel free to leave a comment, or send an email to searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Tag: SearchSIG

Audioblog.com secures funding to launch podcast and videoblog service in Asia

Just got pinged by Master Eric Rice on his funding announcement: Audioblog.com secures funding to launch podcast and videoblog service and portal in Japan, Korea and China.

This is an exciting news , especially as Eric looks at entering the relatively untapped Asian market leveraging the experience of a great partner. No terms disclosed in Eric's post:

I'm excited to announce funding, as well as a partnership between Audioblog.com and Transcosmos Investments, (The US investment arm of Transcosmos Japan) and Tokyo-based J-Stream, a media infrastructure provider.

Together, we'll be launching our existing podcast and videoblog service and portal in the region for mobile and computer-based customers.

[Via Audioblog.com News]

Congrats to Eric and the Audioblog.com team!

And as usual, Om broke it. Wonder if he got the scoop at the SimplyFired dinner.

What are your favorite tech startup founder's blogs ?

In a week, I will have the privilege of addressing the Founders Forum SIG to talk about “Blogging for Company Founders”. The session can apparently only be attended by a maximum of 25 CEOs or founders of startup companies, on a FCFS basis. I therefore hope to have a very interactive session, and only plan to have a very brief presentation to jump in questions and issues of the audience as quickly as possible.

One of the things I want to cover at some point during the conversation is what kind of great, and bad, examples, have been seen out there in terms of founder blogs, and I would really like to go beyond the social media “pure plays”: Mena Trott, Caterina Fake, Matt Mullenweg, Dave Sifry, Scott Rafer, Loic Le Meur,… who have all been blogging for a long (and sometimes long long) time and might have started/joined their current venture because of their blogging. They sort of come with the territory, and are expected.

I am therefore interested in hearing from you guys about startup founders outside the pure social media space whose blog has attracted your attention, and has helped establish the visibility and credibility of the company in a space that is not particularly blogging/RSS savvy.

I would also like to hear about this segmentation of tech startup blogs, in which I see four major facets (even though the first two could be combined):

• the PR blog: mostly used to communicate around the product(s) and services offered by the company, it features new functionality, tips, service announcements (booh, we’ve crashed or we’re having a massage),… and is a “disaster recovery” channel (i.e it is one of the elements used to deal with major PR issues).
  I would expect any startup that launches nowadays to have a PR blog, available at blog.domainname.com (?).
• the community blog is an extension of the PR blog, it helps animating the user community, and features examples of the usage of the products. Good examples of a community blog are the Flickr Blog, or BlogPulse Highlights.
• the reference blog: aggregates and editorializes news and links related to the industry in which the startup is operating, it can become a preferred source of information if the point of view is not completely one sided (otherwise it becomes a “PR blog”). A couple reference blogs I subscribe to are Findory’s Greg Linden, who covers search, blogging and RSS aggregation, and WhizSpark’s Peter Caputa who covers the Web 2.0 space and entrepreneurship as it relates to his startup.
• the authoritative blog: mostly contain original pieces describing personal thoughts or experiences of the founder(s), and therefore provide a unique point of view on an industry or a market. One  example is Jotspot’s Joe Kraus.

I actually used the word facets because a comprehensive blog will cover all three aspects, and I would nominate SocialText’s Ross Mayfield as one of the best examples. But once again, I am looking too much at the blogs I read for my own practice, and would love to hear about great blogs that are not related to social media or Web 2.0 per se.

As I did for the Venture Capital session I led at Bar Camp, I will post the presentation and summarize our discussion shortly after the event.

Thanks in advance for your input!Please list those blogs in the comments of this post, or send me an email: jeff [dot] clavier [at] gmail [dot] com.

Introducing the SDForum Search SIG

We're back! After the smashing (let's keep it modest) success of Vertical Leap, the SDForum Vertical Search conference, Dave McClure and yours truly have agreed to co-chair the SDForum Search SIG, and we are excited to announce the first event - taking place on Sept 14th on the Yahoo campus in Sunnyvale: "Audio Search : Selling Picks & Shovels at the Podcast Gold Rush". If you don't understand Dave's English, it means that we'll talk about Podcasting Search and Directories.

For our readers outside of Silicon Valley, the SDForum is a key local non-profit that is organizing a large number of events around different technologies, and a SIG (for Special Interest Group) focuses on a given technology or market. The Search SIG is all about, well, Search... and its tag line will be (until we find something more catchy) “the Search for Search".

The purpose of the Search SIG is to offer a communication and collaboration platform to the Search ecosystem: search engines, marketers/advertisers, users and developers. Through a series of monthly events, the SIG will cover a large diversity of topics: from the latest developments in search to the needs of brands and advertisers, through the issues and key learnings of starting, funding, building, and exiting a search company.

We plan to use different formats for the SIG as well: fireside chats with key executives of the ecosystem, panels, presentations + Q&As, unconference - i.e the panel is the audience, etc. Once thing we request, demand, beg for, is the participation of the audience.

We also want to give companies the opportunity to introduce themselves, launch their products, in short segments of 5 to 15 minutes max. And at the end of each session, anybody having an announcement to make will be able to do so.

The Search SIG will take place at a few locations in Silicon Valley, and rotate amongst them, most likely on a quarterly basis.

We are set for the first two sessions, September and October (Mobile Search - a joint event with our friends of Mobile Monday) , beyond that we are welcoming your input.

• Fireside chat with a search engine Founder
• Unconference format + holiday bash (kind of what we have in mind for December)
• Search and the law of very large numbers - a look at the architecture of a search engine

So let us know what you think, topics you would like to see covered, and if you want to use the Search SIG as a launch pad for your Search startup, get in touch with us.

We can be reached through searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com.

Tag: SearchSIG

Why the PodShow investment makes sense - at least to me

I have posted about PodShow’s funding upon the news “leaking”, and nothing I have read,  heard or watched since seems to contradict what I sort of guessed: Kleiner Perkins led the round, and invited Sequoia and Ram Shiram in – most likely so that PodShow founders end up a Google feel-alike funding syndicate. No idea of the actual split of the capital among syndicate players, but that is really not important – at least for now. Update: just found the press release announcing the investment.

The questions I got after my initial post ranged from “What is the business model ?” to “What are these VCs seeing in podcasting ?” (including some “WTF ???”). And since I repeated my (modest) explanation a number of times, it was natural to post it.

The prestige of the syndicate, which was subject to mockery when they invested $25M in Google way back when – and returned a “mere” 300+ times that investment, has obviously increased the credibility of PodShow – almost instantly. But the business model is yet to be validated, and the real size of the opportunity to be assessed.

To get a glimpse of PodShow’s vision, I would recommend listening to the Aug 15th issue of the Gillmor Gang during which CEO Ron Bloom (26’ into the show) clarifies the current master plan: essentially tap into the $27B budget today allocated to broadcast radio – and get a portion of it shifted to a medium that will eventually allow marketers to have a fine grain targetting and better tracking (I bet our MP3 players are soon going to provide many more data than today as to what you listen to, skip, come back to, etc. – all constitute elements of Attention metadata). Bloom in the same program explains that he and Curry are essentially doing the same thing they successfully accomplished a number of years ago with their previous company: convince an existing establishment that a new medium in being created, and that – like every new medium – very large opportunities are being created. Good complements to this program are Dan Farber’s account of the Gang’s discussion, and this video interview of Ron Bloom and Adam Curry by MarketWatch’s Bambi Francisco.

Looking at it from the standpoint of the VCs now, what do we have: a very large market ($27B in ad spending) that has a chance of being disrupted, a couple of guys who have worked together before, and have succeeded in participating to the disruption of an adjacent space, and one of the two guys is one of the most visible – if not the most visible – opinion leader in this new space. Very large market being ripe for disruption, market changing play, repeat team, recognized leader (providing a de-facto differentiation), not too crazy probability of success,… all these factors tend to look very positive in a VC investment context.

What else ? Risky investment ? What is the exit ? Answers to these two questions can be found in two interviews. On investment risk, I will quote DFJ’s John Fisher from this terrific interview by Sterling Hoffman:

In general, there’s a critical notion that many people don’t understand about early stage or high-risk investing. That is, the most that you can possibly lose on any given investment is one times your money. The most you can make is unlimited. The truth is that risk and reward are often directly correlated. It doesn’t make any sense to be afraid of risk as a venture capitalist. What you need to be concerned about is: “How big is the upside?” The truth is that in the early stage of the venture capital business it is common to lose all of your money on the first third of your deals. It’s common to make no meaningful return on the second-third of your deals and it’s common to make all of your return on the last third. The baseball metaphor really applies: if you’re a .333 hitter, you’re at the top of the league. In the venture capital business, if you make money on a third of your deals; you should be doing fine so long as you’re making more than three times your money on average on all your deals, you’re making money for your limited partners across the board. A home run analogy really applies too. The magnitude of your winners determines the ultimate degree of success. So the home run deals make the difference between mediocre returns and superb returns. What really matters is the magnitude of the winners. You’ve got to swing for the fences every time you place a bet because, given the fact that the risk is high in all of these situations, you better make sure that the winners really pay off. So you will have to be very ambitious for them and only invest in companies that can, if they become successful and truly achieve their vision, become extraordinarily valuable.

On exits, I will refer to a podcast interview PodTech.net’s John Furrier did with Sequoia’s Mark Kvamme. At some point, John asks the same question I asked Mark at Vertical Leap (on the VC panel I was moderating): how do you plan exits ?  Mark provided a consistent answer: “Our job (at Sequoia) is to build great companies, exits take care of themselves”.

My position is therefore that it made a ton of sense for KP and Sequoia to come in, and fund PodShow given its potential and its risk profile. They are amongst a handful of firms that would be able to support the development of this opportunity into a new market, without looking constantly at the huge execution and adoption risk that the team will be facing. Because at the end of the day, the worst that can happen is that they lose their $9M (or whatever they will have invested) – and all things considered (in this context), they certainly won’t lose sleep over it given the potential payout.